Labor & Employment Law

ITUC Launches Global Youth Campaign

By James Parks

To reach a new generation of young people, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), in recent days, launched a new global campaign to help global unions combine their day-to-day work and help young people join unions.

The Youth Campaign involves a range of tools, including video, social networking, posters and websites, as well as a special campaign guide. The campaign aims to show that by joining unions, young workers can influence issues and events they are concerned about at a global level, as well as improve their own working conditions. Check out ITUC’s youth blog here.

Trade unions can choose from a menu of materials that fit into their campaigns or activities already under way in their countries.

Says ITUC General Secretary Guy Ryder:

The benefits of trade union membership for young people are clear, and this campaign gives new tools to trade unions around the world to demonstrate the global dimension of union action in a way which is relevant to youth. It also gives a further push to innovation and creativity in the way unions reach out to their members, and to society at large.

The AFL-CIO, under the leadership of Secretary-Treasurer Liz Shuler, is spearheading a major initiative to develop the leadership skills of young union members and connect with the realities of their workplace lives.

The AFL-CIO’s young worker program kicked off with the first of a series of forums with young union and community leaders in Washington, D.C., earlier this month. The next forum is this weekend in San Diego, with four more set over the next two months. The regional forums will lead up to the first-ever AFL-CIO Youth Summit in early June, where young trade unionists will explore how younger workers can become even more involved in building the kind of country we all want to live in.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on March 28, 2010 (boomark / email).